Friday, May 30, 2014

CASSETTE REVIEW: Bag of Bones “Deep Thought” (Wolf Town DIY)

As
per Bandcamp, this release actually came before “On Moving On”, even though I
listened to and reviewed that one first.
While I feel like time is relative to reviews, there can often be said something
about how artists can only grow and get better as time goes on (At least they
should) and thus in some ways, “On Moving On” should be a much better cassette
than this because if not then why make it, right?

The
thing with “Deep Thought” and then “On Moving On” is that they don’t really
compare, but rather have that feeling where they are both just full of solid
music. In a lot of ways, these two cassettes
can bring to mind how I feel about the various albums released by Bayside over
the years, and how they don’t necessarily compare but are all good.

The
music here brings out a bit of The Stryder, but I can also hear some of I Kill
Giants. You can tell on some level that
this did come before “On Moving On”, as Bag of Bones seems to be still
searching for their sound, but it is still a consistently good effort none the
less. It also has those singing to your
dashboard whilst driving type of lyrics that I love, particularly the line “You’re
stuck in high school, I’m getting older”.

Many
times, music can feel like a downer—Smashing Pumpkins comes to mind as a great
example of music that can have an overall downer vibe to it and the lyrics only
enforce that notion—but the music of Bag of Bones on “Deep Thought” seems to be
slightly more positive than one would expect based upon the words being
sung. In and of itself, and in the
greatest possible way, this is upbeat music for pessimists and I love it.